I'm sure they're lying about something. Nasa actually was caught faking footage for 'promotional purposes' or some such shit. I'm just trying (probably poorly) to regurgitate my understanding of the shit as it was explained to me. The russians lost a crew that went up b4 Gargarin b/c they depressurized and cooked alive on reentry. They hid it for decades. The capsule landed but all were dead. I won't pretend like I know 'the truth'. I do know there are retroflectors on the moon however and you can literally buy a laser powerful enough these days to test it. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20100413-apollo15-LRRR.html https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/retroreflectors-from-apollo-to-mars they use them for calculating distance and orbital path of the moon.